Main menu

Category Archives: Google Analytics

The free service measures a variety of statistics, such as traffic engagement, navigation within websites and actual sales. However, using it effectively is not easy, especially for entrepreneurs who are new to the tool or new to web business.

This interactive session will take you through the different pieces within Google Analytics, help you get comfortable with the tool and, most importantly, present a unique, simplified approach to help you make sense of Google Analytics reports.

Instructor Pamela Chandra, founder of Hedgehog Insights, has performed data analytics with Accenture and Time Warner retail. You can find more information about her work at http://www.hedgehoginsights.com.

Answer: Losing sight of the single biggest issue on their way to growth.

Here’s what my years of experience in consulting and auditing web business comes down to- challenging the biggest mistake many businesses make while analysing data. My point in writing this piece is also the same and I believe resolving this one can resolve many others you face daily trying to get the ‘whole data thing’.

I categorize it as the directional issue – wrong direction or lack of it. Better explained as the inability to understand:

Data to track / collect

Insights to look for

Location of right data

A business focus is the foremost requirement in any data analytic exercise.

Let’s understand what I mean with an example.

Q: What do you do when you see spiraling marketing / advertising cost? Do you cut down activities that’s costing you the most?

If you said yes then welcome to the big club. You should realize cost is not more important for business than profit. Cost does not matter much if profit is many times over. Increasing profit is a forward looking attitude , while cutting cost is often looking backwards. If you still believe cost then you should find another job. Otherwise – know that thoughtless cost cutting could be dangerous. It could be that the costliest activity is also getting highest traffic to your website or your store. Let us look into web analytics and our marketing activities online.

A study of Acquisition reports within Google Analytics (with all business goals properly set up) could clearly show all sources of traffic (Direct, Social, Referral, Ad or Organic) and corresponding rate of goal conversion. Also don’t miss relating total goal volume achieved as that will give a better performance assessment . Add to this an analysis of different campaigns you are running- emails, AdWords, Facebook ads with properly set up campaign tagging. Together these will uncover all those activities that has least return, least conversions or even user session on your website . All of these contribute to acquisition cost but has least impact of overall sales. These should be your target. These are potential areas to cut cost on. So take a deeper dive- verify your finding and take an action.

Getting back to where we started – the central idea of this analysis is to reduce cost but without impacting business growth. Similarly for every analytics question , I feel its is worthwhile understanding the biggest issues that’s stopping growth.

Can Google Analytics Help – improve traffic to the most important page on your website?

Traffic to the most important pages on your website using Google Analytics

The Answer is yes, Google analytics can help you with all information you need to improve traffic. And not just that. It can also help you see how improvements to that page has performed. Or whether traffic actually increased.

The first and the most important thing you need to do – is tell Google Analytics which one of the many pages on your website is most important to you (after of course setting up Google Analytics). This really goes through a little additional setup called Goal Setting .

While Google Analytics has several types of goal that you can track , the one that will help study traffic our important page is Destinations Goals. Destination goals tells GA that if there is a visitor to this page from no matter where- please consider that as a conversion.

Now apparently this may not seem that informative. But if I tell you with this you can also know the number of visits that came in from a specific location like Middletown, CT or the most popular devices visitors used – mobile/ tablet or the channel they took- social media, Google Ads or simple search will that be informative? Will you know exactly which channel or geographic location to focus on ? Will you try to boost some traffic from these sources or locations. Will you try to find if your website is optimized for mobile phones etc. And while doing all this are you increasing your chances of highest traffic to that page? Answer is Yes!

Google Analytics as a tool is known for many good things – it has many cool features, tracks websites, mobile app , can also describe audience, traffic source etc etc, but one area where it really fails its users is its usability. It really creates a daunting task, to go past the 90 odd reports and numerous metrics to identify one that should be improved or looked into for issues. That’s where data within Google Analytics and the 95 different reports can potentially paralyze any analytical mind, not to speak of first timers.

For me too, there is not been a single day when I sit analyzing with data and wish has navigation been any easier. However what drives to go past all this and try to decipher some sort of insight from a number is really the varied ways Google Analytics measures website performance. If properly set up it can talk a lot about audience, demography, , sources of traffic , onsite behavior, navigation, landing and exit page effectiveness and finally what this all means to business.

And all this together give can give a pretty solid idea about experience visitors take away from websites and mobile apps. Not to forget, a great user experience is often step on to having a satisfied visitors who also convert .

As a heavy user of Google Analytics I have often found several starting point for further analysis. At several point data poses this question why ? and leads to further analysis. An example would make thing clearer

Speaking quantitatively one website I had a chance to work with, proudly displayed a media coverage video in the area above the fold on home page. Often marked as an important landing page the home page had numerous visitors. However only 10 percent of traffic actually scrolled below the video or viewed any of the important business information that waited there. Approx. 90% dropped off the website after watching the video. Illustrations above the fold is a great idea but not if it actually ends up driving traffic away. With this clue we initiated two modifications. 1. Replaced the video with a sliding image and added calls to actions , business info , one liners on the images . Result was not surprising – we helped visiting traffic navigate easily .But more interestingly these raised enquiry, conversions and utilize the most populous area of the website without fiddling much with the aesthetics.

Web Design is not a conjecture. It is Science.

Website designs is a commoditized service today. Layouts, frameworks, designs, samples, and even color combinations, has been stereotyped. Almost typcasted are each design specifics for each business types: Ecommerce, Lead generating, Content and Blog site, Photographic sites, Hobby and personal site

Does anybody ever spare a thought on the voice of customers?

Aesthetics aside, everything from layout to font choice should be guided by user testing to ensure that the website is not only pretty but also functioning at its best

It is the result of extensive online tests that we today know:

1. Serial Position Effect- put the important stuff at the beginning and end – mid page has least eyeball.

2. Loss Aversion- to significantly impact your conversions focus on highlighting losses than on benefits- losses are more painful than gains are pleasurable

3. Herd Behavior- People tend to do what other people are doing- Testimonials Rock!

4. Language processing tests of brain- navigation labels and copy in pages must be easy for visitors to understand. Use common words local lingual. Your business is not what you think your business is but what your visitor – a great step towards right keywording.

5. Von Restorff Effect- In the 1930’s, German scientist Hedwig von Restorff discovered that when given a list of ten items, people remember items if they are a color different from the others – visual differences, or “pattern interrupters.” can create repeat visitors

6. Headlines aren’t just the first thing seen on a page, they’re looked at more than anything else. Be careful about headlines – words fonts , color and background

Although small each of these aspects are immensely insightful to help create a great online shopfront – one that converts.

Not published widely , but smart and forward looking business, does tons of these experiments every day, to know their customers , understand what they prefer and when and why.

And there are great tools. Irrespective of business size and conversion rate, every business that has an online presence should considering trying experiments like A/B tests, and Multi-variant testing or MVT.

And these series of experiments and insights form what is called the science behind a great website – very specifically yours, for your business and tuned into attract your target group.

Decades back advertising was still called advertising, but analytics was not. There could be a handful of words describing it’s to some extent – research, data interpretation, forecasting etc. but analytics is a fairly new connotation of all these put together. That is not to say analytics was not used. Advertisers, acted on every form of data available, because advertising was a business expense and there is God in good ROI. Understandably, like God good ROI too does not come by easily.

For good returns, advertisements, need to be targeted, rightly placed, positioned, coined and directed. What all this mean is a great deal of work, to understand the demographics, psychographics, time of visits , duration of visit and general actions audience take . Historic data can paint a picture of past and trends from past give potential clues to future that help advertisers generate ideas and maximize effectiveness.

Today’s times have changed, but not the intent and purpose of advertisements. We have new media ,several new platforms, evolved technologies to glamorize our message but good returns still lies at the heart of what we call online ads. So all little snippets of texts sponsored on search engines, display networks, YouTube videos, pop up messages, Facebook , Twitter , Instagram, they now reign the arena alongside the new age data interpretation called analytics. Analytics of online ads, is a vast field and uniquely simple, because only ads are highly measurable. Tools and technology are available , mostly free to aid our task. I’ll have more to speak on this subject in our next post , but suffice it to say today that it is truly analytics of online commercials that makes it worth the way. More to come . Stay Tuned

Google Analytics has revolutionized the web analytics space and it does not really need any proof anymore. Something so easily accessible, literally free is also so robust that it tracks almost every aspect of web presence of businesses- that’s a rare combination. Not only website traffic, but universal analytics now tracks all digital devices a business has flanked its presence in- mobile phones, tablets, kiosks etc. To me , it’s like unconditional love and it’s difficult to resist love in return 🙂

And guess what , that’s not it. Introducing <drumroll> Demographic-Interest and Benchmarking.

Yes it is demography and interest information about your traffic. When GA started this, few months back ,information in it were subjected to advertising and promotional activities with Google. That’s love but not for all. Personally, I didn’t quiet approve it. And then one day to my sweetest surprise- I found it loaded with data. It’s exciting because – it is essentially helping you frame your target group and direct the right advertising messages.

The other great information are Benchmarking metrics. A group of metrics together show how much traffic flow , in which sales channels and Geographic location , is causing what conversion (Goal Setting). It compares you /your business compared to the competition in your immediate industry. It shows where you have excelled and where have others.

But if you have paid good attention, you’ll get to read lot more lying between the lines. It talks which channels are popular among the industry, which of them are greatest and most lucrative source of traffic for the type of product/service and which of them really stinks. Considering the fact each industry and business type has their own list of favorite channels, this looks like great information. Similarly with geographic location it goes to show possible demand in in terms of traffic flow. Left me impressed- yet again!

About Hedgehog Insights– We are data analytics service provider . We offer analysis of business data. Be it daily operations, cash flows, website data or ones from social media, we analyze all of them together, on one platform, draw, connections, correlations, causes and offer our clients set of easily actionable insights. Tools are really in abundance and we are not selling another expensive one, all that we are sellingis a promise that our analysts will offermodern and conventional analytics , work with you and help you see hidden opportunities from your business data.Schedule a free consultation